First confession: Pentagon admits 2 Syrian children killed in US airstrikes

The Defense Department confirmed that airstrikes in a November raid near the town of Harim, Syria caused the deaths of two girls. The confirmation comes from an internal investigation of the raid, which was published Thursday.

It’s also the first announcement made by the US stating that its
airstrikes have killed civilians in Syria since the air raids
began in September 2014.

The Obama administration’s strike on November 5, 2014 – part of
its Operation Inherent Resolve strategy – targeted the meeting
place of soldiers linked to the so-called Khorasan Group, an
Al-Qaeda subsidiary.

In a statement, US Central Command
said the strikes “likely led to the deaths of two
non-combatant children.”

The report went on to say strikes “likely resulted in the
destruction of Khorasan Group-affiliated targets that had been
converted to military use,” adding that “the children
had not been assessed as residing at any one of the
targets.”

“We regret the unintentional loss of lives,” said
Lieutenant General James L. Terry, Commander for the Combined
Joint Task Force, in a statement. “The Coalition continues to
take all reasonable measures during the targeting process to
mitigate risks to non-combatants, and to comply with the
principles of the Law of Armed Conflict.”

The investigation found that prior to the strikes, the Department
of Defense confirmed the Khorasan Group was using buildings in
the area for military purposes, and that there was no indication
of children near any of the buildings. The strikes also injured
two civilians living near the targets, according to the
investigation.

Previous reports have questioned the validity of US claims that
there have been no civilians killed as a result of the
airstrikes. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said just
this month that an air raid had hit a civilian village by mistake
and claimed 52 lives, including seven children. The Reuters news
agency has reported that 118 civilians have died since the
campaign began in September.

In a related story, the White House in April said that two
hostages, an American and an Italian, died in Pakistan earlier
this year as the result of a US-launched drone strike that also
killed two American citizens involved with Al-Qaeda.

Officials said that the attack in January against a suspected
terrorist compound caused the death of American development
expert Dr. Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian aid
worker. Ahmed Farouq, an American considered by the US government
to be an Al-Qaeda leader, was killed in the same strike that
caused the deaths of Weinstein and Lo Porto.

Obama said that the US was never aware that either Weinstein or
Lo Porto was being held at the compound that was struck.

“Based on the intelligence that we had obtained at the time,
including hundreds of hours of surveillance, we believed that
this was an Al-Qaeda compound, that no civilians were present and
that capturing these terrorists was not possible,” he said.